i swear that bog body was there when i got here

But also, this is why reading comprehension is a skill. Because what Sanderson is doing with his epic fantasy is expecting that the reader is coming in knowing that the book is going to be laying out an expansive and mysterious world, which will be gradually explored and explicated over the course of the story. 'Way of Kings' is especially egregious in this because (as noted by the original questions) it doesn't even start by introducing you to the humble (farmboy, traditionally) protagonist whose situation you might understand a bit before it unfolds; it starts by introducing a dozen different mysteries and proper nouns, and asking you to keep them in mind as you read to discover what they are.

This isn't a bad approach, but it is a specific one, and if a reader has asked 'what's a good fantasy series to start reading?' it's entirely possible they don't _know_ that this is a mode of reading/writing. If what they've read before has been books that start off introducing one character for them to relate to, and here's the interesting quirk of their situation, it's perfectly reasonable to wonder why, after three pages of reading, they don't know what's happening.

This is not to say that other ways are dumb or bad, either. 'Hunger Games', eg, starts off with 'here's a poor girl trying to keep her family fed in a bad situation' before it gets into more of the complexities and layers of the story. On the flip side, I've meet Sanderson fans who struggle with other fantasy novels because they get so wrapped up searching for the 'system' of magic that they don't appreciate anything else that, eg, Le Guin is doing.

If you want to read more about the particular ways that scifi/fantasy expects readers to be reading, this essay by Jo Walton is really good.

"To the Poem" is one of twelve poems by Frank O'Hara highlighted in JSTOR Daily's recent article, just in time for National Poetry Month. We love the effect produced by enjambment here!

"Alright I think I'm almost done actually-"

Megler for years was little aware of the game’s success. After graduating, Melbourne House offered her a full-time position, but she was sick of assembler debugging and turned it down: “I have a very low tolerance for doing the same thing over and over again.” She accepted an entry-level job at IBM, who “made it very clear that having written a game was not regarded as any kind of relevant work experience,” and would go on to a long and successful career as a computer professional—but never again worked in games. It wasn’t until the 2000s that she learned the extent of The Hobbit’s popularity, and its impact on a generation of players around the world: players who had first learned English to solve it, or had their imaginations fired for their own computer careers by the magic inherent in the game’s simulated possibilities.

(50 Years of Text Games)

And that got me thinking about legacy and how we perceive ourselves for a bit. Because to Megler none of this stuff is that important, apparently. For her this was just a college programming job, what others saw as groundbreaking NPC design she saw as ordinary, a stepping stone in her career; not part of her real life, which involved IT work. And today she is a leading data scientist at Amazon. But if you look her up online, check her wikipedia page, all of that stuff is a footnote. The last 40 years of her life, the stuff she valued, it's all placed under several paragraphs talking about her involvement in games, stuff she did for less than a year. 100 years from now, assuming people are still playing video games, people will probably be talking about The Hobbit, long after all the other stuff fades into history.

Explaining how the timeless clash between the two sides remains among the most elemental forms of storytelling worldwide, a study published Tuesday by researchers at Oxford University has concluded that virtually all modern narratives are re-expressions of the classic Alien Vs. Predator conflict. “The Epic Of Gilgamesh, Paradise Lost, The Old Man And The Sea—each is simply a different culture’s exploration of the ageless, universally relatable struggle between Alien and Predator,” said study co-author Dr. Gavin Horsley, who noted he has yet to encounter a civilization whose most prized written works and oral traditions did not derive from the prototypical confrontation between the savage Xenomorphs and their technologically advanced, extraterrestrial humanoid adversaries.

whatever your question, you, personally, should want to know the answer

he also said, by the time you get to your thesis, you should have a problem. not a personal problem like a caffeine habit or relationship troubles, there should be something in history that bothers you. something you feel doesn't quite make sense or something. and that's what your thesis should be about ideally

Cities are built in uninhabited "greenfields" with nobody living ON or owning the land where the player builds

"Zoning" as the main and sometimes only way to organize cities, when it's not even a factor in many places (Latin America anyone?)

This zoning being the main factor in growth in cities; people do not buy land and build themselves, or invest in building projects, they just establish themselves in wherever the zones are

A lack of history to your cities, so you don't have, for example, the "old towns" of European, Middle Eastern cities, etc. Historical buildings and city-planning are non-existent

An avoidance of politics. Sure, resolutions and laws are technically there, but you as the player enact them or not at will. The citizens of your city have little to no say on what the Almighty Mayor does.

Lack of interaction with the higher levels of government (governors, national governments)

Treating cities as an "enterprise" with profit (taxes) and expenses, instead of. You know. A government.

Lack of interaction with entities inside the city. Who owns the big factories in your industrial city, the skyscrapers in the commercial district?

And of course, I believe I don't even need to talk about this, but a completely car-centric design that makes all city-planning circle around traffic

At the end, all these games become about one and one thing only: SOLVING TRAFFIC (or logistics and resource management, which is traffic but fancier)

book from the sky (tianshu) xu bing, 1989-91